1877.] 
AMERICAN AGRIC ULTURIST. 
2fci7 
nof to be attained in (he ordJDary methods. The ma- 
chine, made by the '^ McBJiy Metallic Fastening Associa- 
tion," of Boston, is an improvement npon that formerly 
made by the " American Cable Screw Wire Co.," noticed 
a year or two ai;o, and while it embodies all the good 
qnaliries of tiiat, there are important inventions added, 
one of the most essential being that of tnrning the wire- 
fastening into the leather, jast as a wood-screw is driven 
into wood. Each machine is capable of bottoming 250 to 
300 pairs daily. An inspection of the work will at once 
show its great durability, wtuch is attested by the fact, 
that shoes made in this manner are exclusively used in 
the r. S. nrmy. One of onr associates, who had a pair of 
boots, which were fastened in this manner, complains 
that he became tired of them, as they were so long in 
wearing out. Those of onr readers, who wish to try 
boots or shoes made -with tlie " Standard Screw," should 
not apply to the Company above named, as they make on- 
ly the machines to supply to manufacturers, but to their 
Bhoe-dealer. There are a plenty of such in the market, 
and the dealers can readily procure them, if there is a de- 
mand for work pat together by the " Standard Screw." 
IVoodwara's DraM-ing Studies, 
and Alpliabets.— These are two serial works by 
Geo. E. Woodward, and published in monthly parts by 
W. il. Stelle & Co., New York. The Studies in Drawing 
are from original designs by some of the leading French 
ariists. and have a freshness that contrasts quite favor- 
ably with tlie old and hackneyed drawing books, and are 
well suited to class or home instmction. The work on 
Alphabets contains the greatest variety of letters, mono- 
grams, and titles. All who have lettering of any kind, 
whether on signs, paper, or embroidery to execute, will 
find here an almost inexhaustible series of examples in 
«very known stylo. Each work will be completed in 24 
parts, five of which are now ready, and two more will be 
added each month. Sold by subscription at 50 cents a 
nnmi>er, each number containing eight beautifully ese- 
cnted quarto plates. 
Tlie I»lag:uft of Insects.— The preva- 
lence of insects of different kinds and degrees of des- 
trnctiveness which has been experienced during the 
present season has not been confined wholly to America. 
The French farmers have also suffered from insects. 
Cockchafers have been so abundant in some depart- 
ments tuat rewards have been offered for their destruc- 
tion; $100 procured the capture of 10,000 gallons of the 
insects. These depredations, which have occurred about 
once in every three years, have led to the passage of a 
law for the protection of small birds against the so-called 
sportsmen. It is time we took a lesson from the French. 
American Veterinary ificvie^v. — 
The fifth number of Vol. 1 is received. With the excep- 
tion of a communication of a needlessly severe personal 
nature, and which we are soiTy to see in this otherwise 
excellent magazine, it is filled with nsefal matter. A case 
that is interesting to farmers and shepherds, is one of 
some lambs of the Central Park flock, which were sick 
for a few days, taken with convulsions, turning round in 
a circle, and finally dropping down, would die. On es- 
amiiiation, the small intestine was found filled with tape- 
worms, (Taenia expatiso), some of them l>eiDg 15 feet in 
length. The brain was congested. Although no cause 
Is assigned for the presence of these parasites, it is easy 
to fix it as being due to long pasturing the same ground 
by this flock. Every shepherd knows, or should know. 
the danger of this practice to the lambs of the flock. 
Castor Pomace as a Fertilizer.— 
The refuse of the castor-oil mills is a valuable ft-rtilizer. 
It is rich in ammonia, containing by an old analysis of 
Prof. Johnson abnnt 6 per cent, and by a recent analysis 
IX per cent. It also contains potash and phosphoric 
' acid; but its chief value is in its ammonia. It is now 
largely made in St. Louis, and can be procured at any 
part of the country from that central point very cheaply. 
At $10 a ton, which is its price at the oll-niills at St. 
Loni:*. the ninmonia costs less than 7 cents a pound. For 
making compost wiih swamp muck, earth, or refuse of 
any kind, there ii» no beltcrorcheapcr material than this. 
Me9dr9. Robt. B. Brown & Co., of St. Ltmls. who manu- 
facture this snhfltance largely, inform ns that it has here- 
tofore been shipped to England, where cvci*y fertilizer 
thnt can be procured is eagerly sought and secured. It is 
a pity and a loss that every valuable waste product of thi? 
kind should be sent out of the conntry. but there arc very 
few faraici-s or gui-dcncrs. who know anything of this pe- 
culiar fertilizer. It is furnished ns a coarse dry powder, 
iu excellent condition for composting, or for applying at 
once to crops In any way that may be desirable. 
¥<ot>o«i ^MQiano. — Messrs. Hobson, Hiirtado 
* Co.. nu'ents of ilu- Prruviiin Government, hare issued a 
circnl.-^r intvndi'd to show farmers the difference in quali- 
ty and uses between the I<obo9 and other guanos. The 
average composition of Lobos, in percentages, is: am- 
monia 6, phosphoric acid, 15 to 20. and potash 3 to 5. 
They commend it as the best and cheapest general fertil- 
izer, and superior, except for such crops as require a high- 
ly stimulating fertilizer, to the Standard Guano, with 10 
per cent of ammonia. For winter wheat they advise 
*200 lbs. of Lobos guano to the acre, with the seed, and iu 
the spring, when the growth needs to be accelerated. 
to supplement this with a dressing of high-grade guano, 
at the rate of 100 lbs. to the acre. 
Prizes tor Tree Planting;.— That ven- 
erable and nseful association, the " Massachxisetts So- 
ciety for Promoting Agricuitnre*'' have undertaken, 
what reitUy belongs to the State to do — to encourage 
tree planting and cultivation in Massachusetts by offer- 
ing several premiums each for plantations of White Ash, 
White Pine, Scotch Pine, and European Latch. Xoi only 
are the premiums, to be awarded in ISTS, liberal, but the 
Society goes srill further, and offers to gratuitously aid 
competitors in procuring seeds and trees from dealers at 
home and abroad. With all these inducements, added 
to the real value of the plantarions when made, we shall 
be surprised if the competitors are not numerous. The 
condiiions of the offers and all other information con- 
cerning them may be had on application to Francis 
Skinner, Esq., Brookline, Mass. 
A Tery I>esiral>le aiKl Attraciire 
Etome is advertised on page 316. Probably no more 
eligible place could be found in the whole country, for a 
family of some menns, to remove to. temporarily or 
permanently, for the purposes of education, securing 
excellent society, etc. 
Economy in Feediu^ Cliiekens. — 
It is in the small economies that the iarraer must look for 
his profits, and a saving can be made even in so small a 
matter as feeding chickens. Where there are many 
fowls raised, throwing the food for chickens directly up- 
on the ground, causes a waste, which in the aggregate 
amounts to considerable, and which can be saved by the 
use of Fowler's "Economy Iron Feeder.'' They .are 
very simple iu construction, easily kept clean, and keep 
food and water in an accessible and pure condition. 
Blindness in I»igs.— ^'P. & Co.," Gal- 
veston, Texas. There are some poisonous plants which, 
acting strongly upon certain nerves, paralyze them. Tims 
the brain or optic nerve being affected by one or those, 
blindness would be the result. Aplantknown as "Paint- 
root," which is common in the South, acts in this mauner 
upon white pigs, and possibly also upon very young black 
ones. This plant was described iu the Aynencan Arp'i- 
cuUurist of March, 1ST6. It may possibly be the cause of 
the trouble amongst your swine. Young pigs regain their 
sight when removed from the poison, and old ones, al- 
though permanently blind, will fatten readily. 
Convention of $>Uort-liorn Breed- 
ers.— The report of the 5th Annual Convention of the 
breeders of Short-horns, which was held at St. Louis, 
Mo., December, 1ST6, has been received. The proceed- 
ihgs were of great interest, not only to breeders of this 
class of stock, but to farmers generally. Their discus- 
sions go to show that the day of enthusiasm, if not of 
extravagance, is past, and that the period of useful 
public service has arrived. There is uow a surplus of 
bulls in breeders hands, and a process of weeding may 
be begun. If this is done with regard to intrinsic value, 
and not to pedigree alone, some weeds of high lineage, 
but of very little value, will be got rid of. and some new 
but promising families, may come "to the fore." Now 
i(9 the time lo popularize the breed ; make steers of some 
nf the bull calves and show what stuff these animals are 
made of iu the butcher's stall. This is the way iu which 
their old reputation was made, and iu which it was kept 
up, until of recent years, when the nerd-book record 
was made to cover a multitude of imperfections. At 
reasonable prices, good yonng bulls can be sold to farm- 
ers, and good cows to dairymen, and if the modern Short- 
horn can be brought to the pail with as much profit as 
was the first Duchess, there is along and useful history 
ahead for them, as the farmers' and dairymen's cattle. 
If OTV K{js!f.*< are I*reservo«l, — The 
procops of dfssicating or drying eg£;s has given rise to a 
considerable industry. The American Egg Comapny, of 
Keokuk. Iowa, usos daily :j.000 dozen of eggs, although 
the business is as yet in its infancy. The V. S. Egg 
Desslcating Company of St. Loui.H. also does a large 
business, and other factories are being pnt intoopeni- 
tion. The process is as follows: The eggs after careful 
candling, are broken and cleared of their shells by ma- 
chinery and delivered in the form of a batter, the whites 
and yolks thoroughly combined. The batter Is then 
discharged by a peculiar arrangement, upon rapidly re- 
volving metalllr cylinders, under a strong blast of heated 
air. These cylinders are auLomalically self-cooling, re. 
maining at a temperature of 70^ Fahrenheit and so 
maintaining at that point all the egg dried upon them, 
in spite of the greater heat of the blast. The dried eg^ 
is scraped from the cylinders in a granulated form, very 
much resembling coarse com meal, and is subjected to a 
subsequent curing process which lasts about thirty days. 
The dessicated egg readily dissolves and returns to its 
former condition of "" batter" when the requisite pro- 
portion of water is .idded. and thus, if beaten the same 
as fresh eggs, it gives the same results in cooking. As 
five hundred dozen of dessicated eggs are packed in a 
single barrel, the saving in transportation is enormous, 
and the other savings from loss by breakage, decay, &c., 
can be more easily imagined than estimated. 
Sundry Hjunbugs. 
not the heart to say: 
have known better." 
pl""^" - ■ . - -^ ^^^-— =g We have before stated 
t^ _-\ % that, however we may feel 
^= -. ^.; 3 indignant at the folly of 
^:>^ -; -.-i^, : " . \-"5 ^hose who allow themselves 
P"" %'^ to be victimized, there is 
■^ ^- 3 much in the Humbug cor- 
respondence to touch our 
sympathies. It often hap- 
pens that people, too honest 
themselves to be suspicious 
of others, are tempted by 
plausible oflers to invest all 
their little means in some 
scheme which proves to be 
a swindle, and when they 
become aware of the fact, 
they write to us for help. 
Of course, money lost in 
this way is irrecoverably 
gone. The letters setting 
forth the loss, show so much 
real distress, tb.it we have 
" Served yon right, yon ought to 
Though we treat many cases with 
ridicule, that being the most efiicient method of showing 
them up, the writing up of the "Humbugs" is by no 
means a pleasant occupation. 'We probably read 20 or 30 
letters for every one mentioned in these columns, and 
this correspondence is cot calculated to put one in a 
cheerful mood, or to give him an exalted opinion of hn- 
man nature. To spend hours in going through ou( 
monthly accumulations of letters, and to read continuous, 
ly of schemes of fraud on the one hand, and the com* 
pl.aints of victims on the other, interspersed byquestionf 
from persons, as to whether this or that scheme is a hum, 
bug or not, is almost enough to make one, for the timt. 
being, think that mankind are divided into two classes, 
the laiaves and their dupes, and we turn from the task, 
when completed, with the same fecliug that one leaves a 
hospital, which he has visited as a matter of duty. Still 
there is now and then, 
A. GLEAM Off PTTN 
to be met with; perhaps rather sombre ftin, but still a 
relief from the otherwise unbroken sadness. The chap 
who offered for 25 cents to tell how to write without pen 
or ink, has met with a rival. The informaiiou which 
this chap gave — '*Write with a pencil"— was perhaps 
worth the amount to one who did not know it before." A 
later one— or it ra.iy be the same in a new guis^e— pro- 
poses for the same modest sum of one-fourth of a dollar, 
to tell people ""How to get rich," someiliing at all times 
desirable to know, and in these liuios of general dullness 
likely to be eagerly sought alter, and we have no doubt 
that the quarters came in so rapidly, that the advertiser, if 
no one else, became more or less rich From the advertise- 
ment. The recipe returned for the money is : '• Increase 
your receipts, and decrease your expenditures." 
Volumes could not tell more, and on the whole, we doubt 
if we arc right in putting one who gives so much for the 
money, in the Huuibugs at all. This man is an rmprovc- 
mcnt upon the Xcw Eugland Judge, who said: "The 
most compendious way of making money is to buy goods 
very low, on a long credit, and sell them very high for 
cash" but tliis advertising man is the "compendi- 
ouscstcst.".... An eminent professor in a leading Uni- 
versity writes " I get 
M.iNT crnious letters, 
but this is one of the most curious." and incloses the fol- 
lowing from a town in SanUoga Co., N. Y. : "Dear Sir, 
could you chnr:;c a pense of steel or Iron with electricity 
for the purpose of mincing, 1 would like a bar about 3 fl. 
long and 1 in. in diameter charged for lead, silver, and 
gold." and wants to know the cost, etc.— Hero is the 
cropping out of a humbug, that has existed in one form 
or another eince very early times— the divining rod, 
which has been nsed hy those who pretend to discover 
not only water veins, but metAJlJc veins below the sur- 
face. Originally the divining rod was of hazel ; in this 
